For the first time, Pope Benedict has directly addressed condom use. The AP reports, “Pope Benedict XVI said on his way to Africa Tuesday that condoms were not the answer in the continent’s fight against HIV, his first explicit statement on an issue that has divided even clergy working with AIDS patients.”
Of course, there is the inevitable critic:
Rebecca Hodes with the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa said if the pope is serious about preventing new HIV infections, he will focus on promoting wide access to condoms and spreading information on how best to use them.
“Instead, his opposition to condoms conveys that religious dogma is more important to him than the lives of Africans,” said Hodes, director of policy, communication and research for the action campaign.
It simply amazes me the charges that people will make against those who are advocating the only actions that are 100% effective against diseases. There aren’t many things in life that do give a 100% guarantee. If you are abstinent and do not share needles, IOW live a moral lifestyle, then it is impossible to get AIDS unless you are born of an HIV-infected mother. More disturbing is the fact that condoms do not stop all STDs, and that little fact is something is that those who want to pass out condoms do not tell you. In spite of all of this, it is dismissed “religious dogma”. But, of course, those who cut themselves off from God cut themselves off from knowledge (Hos 4:6), even health knowledge.